Note: To avoid a long header list, I am sending this to myself, andBcc'ing it tothe people on my list. Thank you for your understanding.]

From Jerry Uhl -- This came in from George Reese , a Math Ed Ph.D studentat Illinois . Withhis permission, I am posting it.

Hi Jerry (Uhl):

I have to chime in here. "Stand and Deliver" came out at the end ofmy first year teaching mathematics to a diverse poplulation of kidsin the public schools in Santa Fe, NM. When they showed thenumbers at the end of the movie on how many kids had passed theAP, I practically cried. Most of the kids I saw were signed up forbluff courses: business math, general math, Algebra I part I, Algebra Ipart II. All four of these courses had the same content: nothing. Butwere able to give kids mathematics credit in 4 separate "math" courses.

At the time, I thought Escalante was really on to an important point, namelythat schools were lying about mathematics and they should stop.I still believe that is true.

I left the public schools and went to teach at the Indian School in Santa Fe.As I continued to teach, I realized that there was another issue.Namely that the tests that are used to measure progress in mathematics may notreally measure anything important. I had moved down the Escalante-idolizationpathway, and I realized that the best way to get to high test scores was tohave a textbook that emphasized the skills that were on tests. Enter JohnSaxon.

The Saxon texts are the best "math test" preparation books out there.Scores go up at places that use them. They are intensely drill oriented andtotally teacher proof. John Saxon told me in a phone call that "any secretarydown the hall" can teach out of these books. I pretty powerful put-down ofteachers, but if it was true, hey, better to face it than continue thedeceptions implicit in watered-down courses.

However, the issue is more complex. Students can learn drill andpractice and love it, and Saxon is the best at it. But when they get an honestto goodness problem without a textbook answer they are helpless or worse,namely angry that they don't have what it takes to deal with the situation.A real problem is then a trick that the teacher has pulled on them.Also, these drill and practice books and tests are very effective atdiscouraging those who don't get it right away, and are very good for thehandy rankings that we parents seem to care about but that damage so manykids who start with disadvantages. Escanlante did great things to empowerthe kids he had, but it was his personality not his textbook that made ithappen.

Well, this sermon has gone on a bit. But I want to say that I believe thatEscalante, Frank Allen,Charles Sykes, E. D. Hirsch and others with similarviewpoints have maybe two valid premises: first that watered down stuff isno good, and second, that getting some cultural capital in the form ofcomputational skills will help students with the ubiquitous tests.Their conclusions however, tracking, drill and kill curricula, and morestandardized tests are simple-minded and wrong.

1. The Pittsburgh public schools once did a study comparing three mathtextbooks one of which was Saxon. They found no end-of-course differencebetween student test courses in the three conditions. For what it's worth,this study seems to suggest that the Saxon books are not totally teacherproof.

2. My intuition is drawn by the claim above that the drill and practiceapproach of Saxon does not transfer well to more novel, non-routine problemsolving. However, it reminds me of the defense of the poor performance ofUS math students relative to Asian students: "Yes, but US students are morecreative". As I recall, Stigler and Stevenson reported in their book thata number of efforts were made to test for this creative edge and no suchdifferences were ever found. Of course, the situation with Saxon may bequite different, but it raises the question in my mind: Has any one doneany experimental studies to test whether or not students using Saxon arebetter at routine math, but worse at non-routine problem solving?********************************************************A response by Jerry Uhl:

Ken

The only esponse that comes to my mind is this: Most math tests aredefective. They tend to concentrate on the part of the course Saxon is goodat. As one teacher put it to me: "I teach a very conceptual course, but Idon't dare ask conceptual questions on tests."